This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Peer-to-peer payment (P2P payment, also called person-to-person payment) is an online technology that allows a “sender” to transfer funds from a payment account associated with the sender, to a payment account associated with a payment “recipient” via the Internet or a mobile phone. The sender may, for example, be a customer of a recipient who is a merchant. Typically, neither the sender nor the recipient has to trust the other with information about his or her payment account.
There are two conventional methods for initiating a P2P payment. In the first method, the sender and payee establish secure accounts with a trusted third-party vendor (typically, a financial institution), designating their respective bank account or credit card information to be used to transfer and accept funds. Using the third party's website or a mobile application, the sender and recipient can complete the process of sending or receiving funds. The sender can only send funds to someone who is a member of the network.
In the second method, the sender uses an online interface or mobile application (typically provided by his or her bank or another financial institution) to contact a third party site. To initiate the transfer, the sender indicates the amount of funds to be transferred, and provides contact data for the payee (an email address or phone number). Once the transfer has been initiated by the sender, the recipient receives a notification using the contact data. The recipient uses the online interface or mobile application to input his or her payment account information (e.g. the number of a payment account held by a bank, and details of the bank) to accept the transfer of funds. In this second method, recipients do not need to have a payment account with the same financial institution as the sender in order to receive a money transfer.
As P2P traffic grows, the computational infrastructure required to implement it is becoming increasingly expensive and complex.